Sunday, December 9, 2012

Pro-Gun Lie Put Straight - Again - More Guns Equals Less Crime

The number of U.S. homicides has been falling for two decades, but America has become no less violent.

Crime experts who attribute the drop in killings to better policing or
an aging population fail to square the image of a more tranquil nation
with this statistic: The reported number of people treated for gunshot
attacks from 2001 to 2011 has grown by nearly half.

The number of people treated for gunshot wounds has dramatically increased. How else could it be since the number of guns has increased? The difference is that trauma medicine has improved so much that fewer people die.

But, imagine the cost. And who do you think picks up the tab for all the emergency room activity?

15 comments:

Just cause theres been a increase in gun shot wounds doesnt necessarily mean it was crime related but on the same note could it be ppl who are doing the shooting are aiming to wound and not kill which would mean it could be victims who are shooting there attackers

that is the kind of logic gw bush used to get us in to 2 stupid wars! i like paying taxes to do good but hate paying to patch people up just so gun apologizers can keep their toys.......tom webbermiami

Well Tom as a so called gun apologizer my guns are not toys are never treated as such but common sense would dictate the more guns out in the world the higher the odds of someone being shot but the question is it cause of crimes or just by accident cause im a realist accidents will happen

"The number of people with gunshot wounds has dramatically increased."

First of all, I want to see a citation for that statement. Second, has the number of people with gunshot wounds per capita increased? Third, has the number of violent attacks per capita increased?

It could very well be that the number of criminal attacks with firearms has decreased on an absolute basis as well as per capita ... and the increase is due to armed citizens defending themselves.

By the way any responses have to be consistent with the data from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports that tell us the rate of violent crime per capita has been steadily declining over the last 20 years. According to the reports, the violent crime rate is now the lowest it has been since the 1960s or early 1970s.

My hypothesis is simple: armed citizens shooting criminals accounts for nearly all of the increase, whatever the increase is. This is the only sensible conclusion since FBI Uniform Crime Reports tell us that violent crime per capita is on the order of 25% lower in 2011 than it was in 2001 ... and the U.S. population has only increased a few percent over that same period.

WSJ... The reported number of people treated for gunshot attacks from 2001 to 2011 has grown by nearly half.

Hmm... Interesting. I must look up the numbers.

Produced by: Office of Statistics and Programming, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, CDCOverall Firearm Gunshot Nonfatal Injuries and Rates per 100,000All Races, Both Sexes, All Ages Disposition: All Cases

That looks like a 17% increase in the number of non fatal gun shot wounds and 9% increase in the rate of non fatal gun shot wounds. That's really not an 'almost half' increase, but where did that slight increase come from? Since CDC doesn't list any IDC codes for the injuries and specifically doesn't list firearm discharges by civilians (non-law enforcement) We'll have to look to other sources.

According to the FBI UCR, an 11-year comparison of data from 2001 and 2011 shows that the rate of aggravated assaults in 2011 dropped 24.33% from 2001, the number of AA dropped 17.37%.

The WSJ suggests that while aggravated assaults went DOWN, aggravated assaults with guns went up. Again, we'll refer to the UCR. In 2011, 26.18% of violent crime included the use of a firearm, in 2001, 26.2% of violent crime was committed with a firearm. It appears that there is no statistically difference in the percent of firearms used in crime

mikeb said ..."The number of people treated for gunshot wounds has dramatically increased."

Uh, yeah, let's summarize, Murder is DOWN, Aggravated Assaults with firearms are DOWN, the percent of aggravated assaults with firearms is about the same, gunshot wounds are up, it appears that the bad guys are getting shot by the good guys and MORE guns equals fewer criminals getting away with their violent behavior and MORE thugs are getting shot.

I have a simple solution, hey thugs, QUIT DOING THOSE THINGS THAT RESULT IN YOU GETTING YOU SHOT! Quit robbing people, quit invading homes, quit assaulting people on the street and most of all, quit being a freaking thug, stay at home and raise your kids, get a job, pay taxes and become a productive member of society!

Somebody had to, the WSJ apparently doesn't have fact checkers and instead of discussing the advancements in medical efficiency they attack firearms and suggest that crime is up. As anonymous suggested, and as I have posted about repeatedly, the murder rate is nearly at the same level it was fifty years ago, the violent crime rate is the lowest it's been in forty years. I'm not sure why the gun control crowd ignores this fact and continue to claim "OMG blood running in the streets".

Thank you TS. It's surprising that I can pull up all that info in about an hour, after pulling a 48 hour shift and having a few drinks after work and the media can't. It makes you wonder what kind of researchers WSJ uses.